Expected Results and Impacts

Output 1

Indicators: Local, public, and private institutions visited, climate change issues discussed, documents/reports collected and reviewed, information synthesised and published in the form of report and circulated among stakeholders.

Results and Impacts: The project generates valuable outputs that will have policy and livelihood impacts, as well as develop a useful information repository that will be analyzed to inform policy decisions on critical issues affecting the future of agriculture and livelihoods in regions of Pakistan prone to high risks of climate change. Identification of policy and research gaps would provide guidance to revisit and reprioritize respective agendas and improve management. The assessment of capacity building requirement of institutions involved in policy analysis/design and research activities related to issues of climate change would help in designing training programmes and initiating other measures to strengthen these institutions and support their activities.

Output 2

Panel data gathered and analysed for measuring climate change impacts across regionsIndicators: Historical data of around 40 years on crop-livestock production trends, climate variables and experimental data related to research and development initiatives gathered, analysed, reported and made available in soft and hard forms.

Results and Impacts: Very important information on climate change events and relevant crop-livestock production is scattered across institutions and not readily available for analytical purposes. Information especially generated through research and development institutions is rarely accessed and analysed along with secondary data available in yearly books. This project is going to fill this gap and develop new inferences through using data from various sources. A mechanism would be evolved to continuously make these data compiled and made available for diverse users.

Output 3

Package of interventions ready to be offered for adaptation as mitigation strategy

Results and Impacts: Information gathered would be helpful in developing questionnaires as well as developing a package of interventions suitable for pilot testing with the communities through involving local institutions/developmental organizations, which could help start piloting the best practices in various districts in future.

Results and Impacts: The major outputs of the project will include: a) an improved understanding of the climate variability and its impact on agricultural productivity, food security, cropping pattern, structures of income and employment, and adaptation-coping strategies of the rural poor in Pakistan; b) Identification of best practices and institutional innovations for mitigating the effects of climate change; and c) strategies to address socioeconomic problems relating to changing weather patterns and availability of a range of initiatives for their alleviation.

A greater understanding of the limitations and potentials of marginal areas will help the national agencies and donors to focus their activities in the country based on pro-poor sustainable economic growth and social development. There is great potential for the adoption of recommendations from this project with the importance given to people’s perspective and the social insights into the adaptation capacity of farmers so that policies may be advanced to enhance their adaptive capacity.

The other associated outputs from the project include: a) better understanding of special limitations and potentials of marginal areas; b) improved strategies for managing risk and vulnerabilities through income diversification; c) creation of awareness and adoption of policy recommendations and development strategies by planners and policy makers for agriculture sector; d) improved longitudinal databases and historical information, training, workshops etc leading to enhanced capacity for policy research in the national programs; e) new policy, institutional and technological options leading to improved management of water scarcity and resource degradation; and f) enhanced scientific knowledge communicated through shared experiences and publications for use by the national and international scientific community.

Output 5

An enhanced analytical capacity at the national level on issues related to climate change, agriculture, and food security.

Indicators: Post graduate thesis research on the issues completed and a number of working papers and research papers in refereed journals on these issues published, acknowledging technical and financial support from the project.

Results and Impacts: an improved understanding of the impact of climate change on agriculture productivity and food security among the young researchers and potential employees of institutions involved in teaching, policy design and implementation, R&D, disaster management, and NGOs.